[31] Of pumpkins and melons several sorts grow naturally in the woods, and serve for feeding Camels. But the proper melons are planted in the fields, where a great variety of them is to be found, and in such abundance, that the Arabians of all ranks use them, for some part of the year, as their principal article of food. They afford a very agreeable liquor. When its fruit is nearly ripe, a hole is pierced into the pulp, this hole is then stopped with wax, and the melon left upon the stalk. Within a few days the pulp is in consequence of this process, converted into a delicious liquor.
Niebuhr.
[32] l’aspect imprévu de tant de Castillans, D’étonnement, d’effroi, peint ses regards brillans; Ses mains du choix des fruits se formant une etude, Demeurent un moment dans la même attitude.
Madame Boccage. La Colombiade.
[33] The Arabians divide their day into twenty four hours, and reckon them from one setting sun to another. As very few among them know what a watch is, and as they conceive, but imperfectly the duration of an hour, they usually determine time almost as when we say, it happened about noon, about evening, &c. The moment when the Sun disappears is called Maggrib, about two hours afterwards they call it El ascha; two hours later, El märfa; midnight Nus el lejl: the dawn of morning El fadsjer: sun rise Es subhh. They eat about nine in the morning, and that meal is called El ghadda; noon El duhhr; three hours after noon El asr. Of all these divisions of time only noon and midnight are well ascertained; they both fall upon the twelfth hour. The others are earlier or later as the days are short or long. The five hours appointed for prayer are Maggrib, Nus el lejl, El fedsjer, Duhhr, and El asr.
Niebuhr. Desc. del Arabie.
[34] The use of the bath was forbidden the Moriscoes in Spain, as being an anti-christian custom! I recollect no superstition but the Catholic in which nastiness is accounted a virtue; as if, says Jortin, piety and filth were synonimous, and religion like the itch, could he caught by wearing foul cloaths.
[35] The effects of the Simoom are instant suffocation to every living creature that happens to be within the sphere of its activity, and immediate putrefaction of the carcases of the dead. The Arabians discern its approach by an unusual redness in the air, and they say that they feel a smell of sulphur as it passes. The only means by which any person can preserve himself from suffering by these noxious blasts, is by throwing himself down with his face upon the earth, till this whirlwind of poisonous exhalations has blown over, which always moves at a certain height in the atmosphere. Instinct even teaches the brutes to incline their heads to the ground on these occasions.
Niebuhr.
The Arabs of the desert call these winds Semoum or poison, and the Turks Shamyela, or wind of Syria, from which is formed the Samiel.